WASHINGTON: As the Trump administration announced new restrictions on H-1B visas, a leading immigration expert in Washington believes that the Trump administration has taken a "shockingly anti-business stance" in its crackdown on the visa programme.
In an exclusive interview with IANS, Sarah Pierce, the Director of Social Policy at Third Way, a think tank, argued that the current policies are making the United States "unattractive" to foreign students and workers.
"Everything that the Trump administration is doing is causing foreign talent to leave the United States, because they have established attacks on international students. There's a lot that the Trump administration is doing to make the United States unattractive to both international students and international workers, " she added.
Pierce also emphasised that the targeting of international students would, in turn, hurt American students.
"US universities are hugely dependent on the revenue that comes from international students who pay not only full tuition, but even usually additional fees to study in the United States, and those benefits go towards scholarships that are frequently used on American citizens, " she noted.
On Tuesday, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed to "amend its regulations" governing the H-1B process.
The DHS proposal seeks to scrap the existing lottery system and implement "a weighted selection process" that would generally favour the allocation of H-1B visas to higher-skilled workers.